


Scar Tissue

by randers1



Category: Chicago PD (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:08:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27808063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randers1/pseuds/randers1
Summary: Some of Hailey's past is returned to her whether she likes it or not. Hint, she doesn't. But Jay, as always, guides her through.
Relationships: Jay Halstead & Hailey Upton, Jay Halstead/Hailey Upton
Comments: 7
Kudos: 102





	Scar Tissue

**Author's Note:**

> So I"m going to go ahead and put a trigger warning here for mentions of past abuse. Just in case.

Jay had spent his day off catching up on sleep and errands. He was waiting to hear back from Hailey about how they’d spend the evening. He had texted and called a few times but hadn’t gotten responses to either. Which was fine. But now it had been a few hours of not hearing back and it didn’t sit well. Pulling in to Hailey’s street he spotted her car parked outside her house and pulled in to an empty spot a few cars ahead.

She opened the door at his knocking, not masking the surprise to see him standing at it.

“So you _are_ alive.” He kissed the top of her head as he moved past her. “What’d I do to earn the deep freeze?”

Hailey closed the door and looked at him, confused.

“I’ve been calling--- and texting.”

“Yeah?” She squinted past him in to the late afternoon sunlight. She’d lost a few hours. “Sorry.” She felt his large, warm hand on her shoulder as he stopped her from moving out of the foyer.

“What’s going on?” His tone was soft, probing.

A small smile grew on her face and she shook her head. “Sorry, really. Nothing.” Hailey sidestepped to the entry table and pulled something from a small drawer. “Here. _For emergencies only_ ,” She stressed, with a smile.

She moved past him now and out of the room while Jay was left to feel the coolness of the spare key she’d just given him to her house. It was so nonchalant, so blasé. Jay blinked a few times as he tried to process it.

He found Hailey in the living room.

An opened box sat beside her coffee table and a few odds and ends had been taken out. Things that looked old, worn, and well loved.

“Okay, A. We’re gonna talk about _this”_ He held the key up to her before sliding it in to the pocket of his jeans. “And B, whadya got going on here?” Jay had taken off his coat and sat beside her on the couch.

“Mm,” Hailey nodded. “My brother---Nick,” she clarified at his unspoken question. “moved and had some of my things in his attic. He dropped them off.”

A visit with her brother out of the blue plus items from her past. That had to have blown her easy and relaxing day off out of the water. 

“Soooo, treasure.” Jay smiled and reached for a photo album, pulled it to his lap and opened it to the first page. He’d catalogued the mention of her brother and saved it for a later conversation. It was the first piece of information he’d gotten about her going incommunicado today and it was an important piece. If it had to do with her family it was going to roll her no matter how much she tried not to let it.

“One man’s treasure is another man’s trash.” She twisted her lips. “You can look through it but then I’m gonna be the second person in that saying.”

“Whaaat? And not keep this sweet face to show people?” He was on a page that showed an early grade school picture.

She smiled at him smiling at the picture, but it wasn’t the kind that spoke of happiness. This one was secretive. And sad.

“Hailey?”

“Mm,” She was lost in the memories, where she’d spent the better part of the day holding old stuffed animals, looking at pictures. It was scary and lonely and daunting but she couldn’t not scroll back through time. The pictures got her the most. Angered her the most. The smiles that hid the real story, the stiffened postures in family pictures, the things that happened just before or just after the shutter clicks.

She broke out of the memory of her little girl self, the one where her mother was applying a cream to the cut on her forehead followed by a bandage, then smoothing down her bangs. _Good as new,_ she’d said. _You can barely see it_. Like that had been Hailey’s concern. She was still reeling from being the one who was yelled at and gone after that morning. _Don’t forget to smile pretty_.

“I don’t remember what actually happened,” her head shook slightly as she slid a finger down her childhood face, the one Jay was looking at. “but the first time, I was 5. Two weeks before my 6th birthday.”

Her voice was soft and nearly dream like. Far away and without any emotion. She tapped the picture with a finger, pointing to her forehead, covered with bangs. “See here? You can kinda see the band-aid?”

“What happened?”

Hailey’s tongue touched the inside of her cheek. “No idea.” She breathed. The statement was quiet and only two words long but they were laced with meaning. She doesn’t remember the during, has no idea what she’d done to make her father so angry that day. But somehow or other she had. And for the first time she’d paid for it.

Jay inhaled deeply and began turning pages.

“What’s going on here?” He stopped on a page where she appeared to be about 10 years old. Navy pier was in the background as she played along a beach.

“Mmm,” she thought about it. “Maybe …. Nope. No clue.” She smiled wistfully, unable to remember the happy day. There had to be some. She had photographic proof right there in front of her. Because she did look happy in the picture. Though if she looked closer…

Yep. She wore too-big sunglasses in this picture, but even so, knowing where to look, she could see the shadow of the bruise dipping down and out the side of the area the sunglasses she was made to wear that day.

As she’d gotten older it became more frequent. Books left out, too much time on the phone, too much make up, not enough time spent at home, too much time under foot, talking back, not talking at all, accusations of how she was looking at her father.

Hailey gave a tight-lipped smile and closed the book and pulled it to her own lap.

Jay had his own photo albums that he and his mother had gone over and over when he was home and she was sick. He took them after she died and they stayed on a shelf, unopened again.

Her lips were still flat as she pushed the book to the coffee table and stood. She poured herself a drink and could hear Jay’s soft laughter and random comments as he’d taken the book back and flipped through pages. She realized he’d stopped talking at some point and was fixated on a certain photo toward the middle of the album.

When she returned to sit beside him on the couch, she found him frozen. “Whatcha got there?” She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear as she sipped and peered over to see what he was looking at. Her high school soccer pictures. She loved that sport. Afterschool practices, away games and weekend tournaments, loving the strength she found in her body, the running. She loved it. Even when she stopped playing and wished she hadn’t. But the questions had begun and there were only so many lies she could tell.

When she heard herself repeating one of her mother’s common ones she knew she was done. She would never tell those stories. Even if was only so she had no one to tell.

“Did you….play on a really rough team?” His question was asking haltingly, his years as a cop and seeing the worst people could do to each other giving him his answer. It’s not the answer he needs confirmed though.

She scoffed lightly in return as she looked to see what he’d caught; The group of pictures taken by the sports photographer for one of those packages she was always surprised her parents bought. There were 3 pictures on the page, each a different pose but all from the same session. Her arms crossed at her chest with her foot up on the soccer ball, another where she held the ball at her hip, and the last was her sitting in the grass, one leg bent with the ball beside her. Her shorts rose up enough for Jay’s police-trained eyes to catch sight of the fading bruises that she vaguely remembered covering up too quickly with poorly matched foundation, and the few black, railroad track stitches that held her skin together just above where her shorts came to rest.

That had been the last season of soccer. She wasn’t even sure she finished it. The questions came from the well-meaning teachers who made anonymous phone calls resulting in women in suits coming to school to talk with her, police stopping by the house. She’d already met Trudy Platt and began dreaming of being just like her, but in her then-reality, police were people she feared as pot-stirrers, problem-worseners.

Hailey felt the warmth of Jay’s fingers as he skimmed the skin at her lower thigh and pushed up the hem of her sleep shorts. Just an inch or two. The scar there had faded from the beer bottle that had been thrown at her full force, the glass breaking against her strong muscle there and the bloody gash that immediately appeared. The one her mother couldn’t stop from bleeding so reluctantly took her in to the emergency room for.

She forced a small smile and pulled her hem down gently.

“I think we’ve had enough going down memory lane for one day.” She reached for the album and slid it closed, on to the coffee table. Turning her body, she angled herself so her head lay in Jay’s lap, her feet on the arm of the couch.

“Hailey…” Jay started.

“What’d you do today?” She knew the attempt at the subject change was lame. Knew he wouldn’t go with it.

“Up, Upton,” he gently pushed her to a sitting position. She sat and inhaled through her nose, trying to brace herself. She hated these conversations. It didn’t matter who they were with.

“I’m good, Jay. Really.” The smile she offered wasn’t accepted and it slid off her face.

She’d grown up telling everyone she was fine, she was okay. No matter the injury or the illness she was always good. It kept people at bay, easier for them to ask the follow up ‘you sure?’ and then move on once she gave the last assurance. The easy lie followed her in to adulthood though Jay was doing his very best to break her of it.

His eyebrows raised briefly and blinked a few times. “Well, we can go with that version, sure.... or we can go with one that’s closer to the truth.” He gestured to the box. “Getting this had to have thrown you. And going through all this stuff…”

“Man, the way you describe it does NOT sound like the good times that they were _at.all_.” She rolled her eyes and blew out a breath. “It’s good. I’m gonna box it back up, take it out back to the alley, and throw it all away.”

“Hey.” He says suddenly. “I have a better idea. Get changed and grab your coat.”

They drove quietly, the box of Hailey’s past in the backseat. She’d given up on asking what they were doing after not getting a response the fourth time she asked.

They pulled in to his complex, but instead of going to his apartment they walked around to the back of his building, to the courtyard. The fire pit. Jay lit it with the kindling left for the tenants and waited for the fire to build.

“You’re quite the boy scout Jay Halstead.” Hailey grinned at him from under her black beanie.

He threw up three fingers stuck together a la the boy scouts salute. Jay unzipped his coat and pulled her down to his lap as he sat in one of the chairs. She sat sideways on him and he draped his coat over them to cover them the best he could.

“So this is….romantic.” Hailey turned to him and kissed his cheek, working down his neck.

“Hailey…”

“This why you were calling me earlier?” she whispered.

“Nice try, Hailey,” Jay pulled her down a bit, draped an arm around her, and held her against him. “But we’re gonna talk about this. That.” He gestured toward the box that sat between them and the fire.

“I’ll remind you about this later,” she grumbled and settled in to him before huffing out a breath. “Okay. I’m yours. Open book. What do you want to know.”

“Okay…now that you’ve come back to your senses,” He joked. “Let’s start with the stuffed rabbit.”

He felt the small chuckle rumble through her and held her a bit tighter in case things got bumpy. “ _That_. was a gift. Ironically, from my dad. For the nights I couldn’t sleep.” She rolled her eyes.

Jay was grateful that Hailey’s ear was against his chest, that she wasn’t looking at him to see the scowl he flashed while thinking of a young, small, scared Hailey, holding on to a stuffed rabbit while her parents argued in the middle of the night.

He rubbed her arm to her shoulder and bent to kiss it. “K, pick a trophy.”

She shook her head. “Um, standard kid stuff. Soccer, swimming.”

“An athlete. Why am I not surprised?” He smiled. “Why’d your brother have this stuff anyway?”

He felt the tension in her body ratchet up a notch. “Um, a few years ago,” Many years ago. “My parents were cleaning out the basement. They wanted me to come over, come get some things. I didn’t.” She shrugged. She avoided going there as much as possible. She didn’t care about the things that could fit in a box anyway. Hailey’s brother had taken the things her mother had secretly pushed to the side. When he asked her about getting them she politely declined that offer as well. Nothing good ever came from seeing her family, even her brothers who’d mostly always been her allies. The box had been forgotten about until Nick found it in his attic.

She breathed in and settled in to him as deeply as she could, sandwiched between the feel of him beneath her, strong and warm, and the soft warmth of his jacket above her. Hailey knew she could tell Jay anything but she doesn’t like talking about it. It doesn’t do any good. So, why bother. This, right now, is perfection. This is happiness. And she doesn’t want to ruin it by talking about her past or her family.

Jay felt her settle in to him and gently tightened his hold around her. This is good. Right here, this moment. It’s everything he wants and needs in life and he closes his eyes for a moment as he allows himself to really feel it, to let it wash over him and through him. He has a momentary struggle about trying to remember every little detail before the feeling, the knowledge, that this isn’t going to disappear, that he can have this moment or others just like it, as many times as he wants as he has the blonde in his lap.

They stayed like that for a few long minutes before Jay moves, groaning lightly as he does. “All right, let’s do this.” Hailey moved off of him, waiting to see what happens next. “Whaddya want to burn first?”

“Burn?”

He kicked at the box.

Huh. She swallowed. She’d imagined throwing the box in the alley and letting the trash truck take it away. Burning it right in front of her had never crossed her mind and she had to take a moment to see how the thought settled. A quick moment later and the anger she felt over the memories seemed soothed at the thought of watching the items melt and burn away.

She smiled at Jay. “Let’s do it.”

“You do the honors.”

Hailey took a deep breath and pulled the first thing she felt out of the box. A few teen magazines.

She looked at Jay who was at the beginning of a smirk, and pointed at him. “Nothing needs to be said about these. They were everything.”

He put his hands up and just smiled. “Not saying a word.”

She threw the magazines in the fire and watched as the fire licked at the pages, watched them blacken and curl.

More items followed those until all that was left was the photo album.

“I’m just gonna say it again, if you don’t want to—“  
  
“Jay, stop.” She put up a hand. “I know.” He’d reminded her with nearly every item, and with every hesitation.

“Okay, but pictures….”

“I don’t want them.” She shook her head. “They’re lies.” She’d already taken some time to see if there were any she wanted to pull, to keep. But nearly every picture had a hidden story behind it and she didn’t need or want those reminders. The only one she kept was a picture of her with her brothers, camping in the woods with cousins as kids.

She held the album in her hands and tossed it on to the fire.

“Hailey—“ His heart ached for her. For the ties she’d severed so sharply even though he completely understood her reasons. He wished he could do something, anything, to spare her the years of pain she’d lived with.

“Sit with me.” She interrupted before he could voice another ‘are you sure about this’ or give her an inadvertent look of pity. She knew he didn’t pity her at all but the looks that he gave her at times screamed how sad he was that she had to deal with any of it at all. She took Jay’s hand and gently pushed him back into the seat they’d shared before. Things that had been raw and painful years ago had had time to settle. She’d never forget but she could put distance between herself and the memories now. There was a thick layer of scar tissue between them and she never had a desire to scratch at it.

“K, hang on a sec….” He reached inside his pocket and took out his phone. Hailey’s look was well received and he offered his defense. “Just c’mere. You’ll see.”

Hailey sat on his lap and pulled his jacket back over them.

Jay’s arm stretched out and he held his phone in front of them. “Say cheese.”

She didn’t but snuggled tighter in to Jay’s chest and grinned. Happy as she heard the shutter click. This was a picture she’d keep. One that had love and trust on either side of the picture snap.

Her past was something she was willing to leave behind, and aside from becoming a cop, Hailey wasn’t one to look ahead, to dream about her future. She wanted heres and nows, and to work on building whatever this was with Jay.

Right now she _was_ happy. Her present was pretty damn good.


End file.
